BooksBarbecue
Back Afterlove
Chapters (86)
  1. Title Page
  2. CONTENTS
  3. Love
  4. Before
  5. One
  6. ONE
  7. Two
  8. TWO
  9. Three
  10. THREE
  11. Four
  12. FOUR
  13. Five
  14. FIVE
  15. Six
  16. SIX
  17. Seven
  18. SEVEN
  19. Eight
  20. EIGHT
  21. Nine
  22. NINE
  23. Ten
  24. TEN
  25. Eleven
  26. ELEVEN
  27. After
  28. One
  29. ONE
  30. Two
  31. TWO
  32. Three
  33. THREE
  34. Four
  35. FOUR
  36. Five
  37. FIVE
  38. Six
  39. SIX
  40. Seven
  41. SEVEN
  42. Eight
  43. EIGHT
  44. Nine
  45. NINE
  46. Ten
  47. TEN
  48. Eleven
  49. ELEVEN
  50. Twelve
  51. TWELVE
  52. Thirteen
  53. THIRTEEN
  54. Fourteen
  55. FOURTEEN
  56. Fifteen
  57. FIFTEEN
  58. Sixteen
  59. SIXTEEN
  60. Seventeen
  61. SEVENTEEN
  62. Eighteen
  63. EIGHTEEN
  64. Nineteen
  65. NINETEEN
  66. Twenty
  67. TWENTY
  68. Twenty-One
  69. TWENTY-ONE
  70. Twenty-Two
  71. TWENTY-TWO
  72. Twenty-Three
  73. TWENTY-THREE
  74. Twenty-Four
  75. TWENTY-FOUR
  76. Twenty-Five
  77. TWENTY-FIVE
  78. Twenty-Six
  79. TWENTY-SIX
  80. Twenty-Seven
  81. TWENTY-SEVEN
  82. Twenty-Eight
  83. TWENTY-EIGHT
  84. Eleven Months Later
  85. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  86. Copyright

She puts her key in the door, nudging it with her hip to get it open. She turns the light on as soon as I follow her in then spins round to face me and points at my jeans. ‘Right. Get ’em off.’

I stare at her, horrified, my eyes wide and my mouth open.

‘I’m kidding!’ She laughs, then tosses her keys on a table under a massive mirror with an elaborate gold frame. She stops to check her reflection in it, fussing over her hair, before walking over to close the front door behind me. I watch her do it and when she comes back to stand in front of me, I finally get a look at the hallway to find that it looks like something from a BBC period drama. Black and white tile floors, a heavy crystal chandelier and a staircase that sweeps up, up, to a domed glass ceiling.

‘Which one’s yours?’ I ask, looking at the doors for the flat numbers, but there aren’t any.

She shrugs. ‘All of it.’

‘This is a house?’ I turn back and blink at her. ‘Like a whole house?’

She nods.

‘How many storeys?’

‘Four and the flat downstairs.’

‘There’s a flat downstairs?’

It’s probably bigger than the one I live in, judging by the size of this hallway.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I say, bending down to unlace my DMs but she gestures at me not to bother taking them off.

‘It’s been in my father’s family since it was built in 1828. They’re the only ones who have ever lived here.’

‘We have a house in Guyana that my great-grandparents built. It’s not as big as this one, obviously, but it has this huge backyard with a cashew tree and a cannonball tree which has these massive fruit-like nuts that look like rusty cannonballs.’ I make a ball with my hands. ‘You can’t eat them, but my grandmother says that when she was a kid and she got toothache, her mother would make her chew on the leaves. The flowers are gorgeous, though. Big and pinky orange and they smell incredible.’

When I look at her, she’s smiling, clearly enchanted by what I’m saying. ‘Who lives there now?’

‘My grandparents. They moved back there a couple of years ago because it was falling apart.’

‘Same with this place. My grandmother was living here until last year, but she couldn’t cope with it. It costs a fortune to maintain and when you add in all the stairs . . .’ She gestures at the staircase. ‘She moved into a home in Rottingdean and as soon as it passed into my father’s hands, he completely gutted the place.’

‘Why?’